Hello Everyone,
I think it’s very important for us to involve you in this process. Over at Spicy Bear, we are trying to figure out the right thing to do for cVillain, cvilleStyle and cvilleMUSE. It’s been a lot of fun working with the 15+ regular writers and the hundreds of supporters, and tens of thousands of readers. But, we’ve hit a wall with what we can do.
Our sites continue to be incredibly popular. Just for cVillain, over the last month we had 16,000 unique visitors, 140,000 page views, 41,000 visits and 400+ RSS readers. Over 80% of these readers are from the Charlottesville area. We’ve thrown relatively few resources at the sites in the last year or so, but now we think it’s time to explore options.
Spicy Bear needs to grow into a more mature organization. We didn’t realize it needed several people working on it full time. We recognize that we’ve taken it as far as we can without bringing in a professional team. That professional team can do things like throw more events, fix technical issues (e.g. archives and comment delay), fix comment formatting, do better reporting and make the experience better for everyone.
For this reason, we’ve been talking to several local companies about acquiring Spicy Bear. We don’t know if that’s the right move, but we do know that we have great people involved and they deserve to pay their bills. The truth is, we need someone bigger than us to make this their baby. That someone has to be a good fit for the Spicy Bear vision and we’ve been very clear about that.
We will continue to help out that new partner for as long as they need, but we wanted to put this out there for critique and to seek ideas.
If you want to contact me personally or have other ideas please email me at kyle@spicybear.com.
Thanks for understanding,
Kyle and the Spicy Bears
[pic from flickr]
Popularity: 12% [?]
You guys are doing the best you can, and you’re amazing. But I personally understand if you find you need someone else to take over the reins. Websites are a lot of work. I hope you find someone to help you out.
whoever would take this over would be incredibly lucky.
aw hell, is THAT why we were jock-sniffing Halsey Minor yesterday.
Hell, I’m sorry, i didn’t mean to ‘queer the pitch’ by saying he had a bad haircut.
i love and live for this website (i have little else), let us know what can be done to help save or sell.
Kyle, as a cost-saving have you given thought to perhaps outsourcing a significant portion of the Cvillain work to India as SNL is planning to do with 40-60% of its local newswriting and research employees?
I guess the posts might be a bit slanted (you couldn’t have Best Hamburger posts, depending on where the outsourcing firm was located) and the posts might sit for a while when they were tidying up after tsunamis and monsoon-flooding and internal; strife/revolution…but really, some of these FFAs sit for weeks and weeks anyhow.
I’m sure if you ring up any Senior Vice President at SNL they can put you in touch with some good people over there who would happily negotiate a deal. The guy with short hair and striped shirt seemed to be speaking the loudest and most vehemently about how many SNL jobs NEEDED to be sent over there—try him first.
I think otterdung has a great idea with outsourcing some of the IT work. Web development and such can be the Spicy branch perhaps in Bangalore, India.
I appreciate everyone’s support and ideas.
The issue isn’t so much saving costs and things like that, it’s more the management of the whole thing. I like the idea of using outsourcing to cover local stories, but you still need someone who can direct the whole ship. We’re looking for a new owner/operator type person/business to do that.
@6
Darren Hoyt is the logical solution to this problem.
/or to ANY problem—flood, famine, plagues of locust/frogs, male-pattern-balding, Pink doing SNL guys…
I like the idea of using outsourcing to cover local stories
no, kyle! bad kyle!
yeah, outsource the comments too!
outsource my face
There’s this old business nutsack sitting next to me at the airport, using a lot of fancy terms like “marketing,” “metric,” and “performance incentive.” I don’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, but he keeps trying to suck daryl’s dick. Daryl has made several “really good observations, daryl” so far, and just can’t seem to stop asking “very important questions, daryl.” it’s pretty clear that daryl is the dominant alpha here.
My point is that we should outsource everything to daryl.
@11
insufferable–call airport security.
assuredly you intended to spell that “Darren”, as in Hoyt.
@11
parlie, if “marketing” is a “fancy term” to you guys, Spicy Bear may have bigger problems than we thought.
/tell the security guys that you saw blowhard stick something shiny and ticking up his backside.
I have never understood the term “death knell” (”knell” throws me) but this seems an appropriate place to use it.
It all smacks of government intervention. I wish you luck and aid from whichever deity you choose. I hope I am mistaken about the knell.
I have never understood the term “death knell”
send not to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee
Wow…. someone that can accurately quote that often fucked up Donne-ism.Kudos as always to Oy.
what’s a revener?
Parlie…..It’s when a dyslexic dentist fucks up a veneer and has to do it over.
I am willing to pay up to twenty dollars (inclusive) for Spicy Bear. Maybe twenty five if you throw in Lehman Brothers.
$30 and a fresh pound cake (berries optional)
/final offer
up your ante to a six-pack and a lap dance, any takers???
I got 5 on it
@ 22. Five what?
Kyle (is the owner, right?) could probably sell this blog to the revamped Piedmont Council for the Arts. The new director of it is supposed to be very edgy and trying to put that failed organization back in the public eye with more aggressive and young initiatives, supporting community and a sense of community and the forwaad looking arts with a leaning to giving money or finding money for young artists and not like the old PCA just publicizing and funding artists in town who already have money and fame locally and nationally. The three aspects of SpicyBear’s blog would serve their purposes well if the new director had the nerve to take it on and stand behind it. It would be a good test of whether they’ll put their money and their support where their mouth is.
Kyle is the owner i guess. Kyle is there an address where i can write to you privately? I thought of two possible buyers for you who would work with Piedmont Council for the Arts to keep this alive and local and not change anything about it.
kyle@spicybear.com